SGI: Discussion

SGI top executives to speak at eighth annual SGI User Group

Quote:
SGI top executives to speak at eighth annual SGI User Group conference
Key customer presentations, SGI Open House, ICE Cube™ and NASA tours will be featured

FREMONT, Calif., Apr 26, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) — SGI (SGI 7.69, -0.28, -3.51%), a global leader in HPC and data center solutions, today announced that it will sponsor and participate in the 8th Annual SGI User Group (SGIUG) Conference to be held in Fremont, California, May 10-12, 2010. Top SGI executives, including Mark J. Barrenechea, SGI CEO, and Dr. Eng Lim Goh, SGI CTO, will be present at the conference. This year's event will feature tutorials, technical presentations and workshops. The SGIUG Conference is open to all SGI customers and partners.

“The SGIUG Conference is a unique event that brings together industry experts to provide valuable information about high-end modeling, simulation and data mining, and to share best practices, tips, techniques and ideas on high performance computing technologies with SGIUG members,” said Chuck Niggley, SGIUG president. “We are pleased that SGI works closely with the user group to help ensure its success.”

Conference highlights will include a technology presentation by Dr. Goh, as well as customer presentations by the Institute of Cancer Research and NASA Ames Research Center. A tour of the NASA Ames Research Center, home to the Pleiades Supercomputer, the largest SGI® Altix® ICE cluster — currently No. 6 on the TOP500 List, is also included. SGI will host an open house and reception at its corporate headquarters and conduct tours of its ICE Cube modular data center. Early bird registration is available until April 30.

“The SGIUG is an important organization that facilitates direct communication between SGI and our valued customers and partners,” said George Skaff, chief marketing officer at SGI. “We look forward to hearing their feedback and welcoming members to SGI headquarters for demos of our products, including the ICE Cube modular data center.”


SGI speaking sessions include (see program for full listing):
  • SGI Keynote: SGI Directions Presented by: Mark J. Barrenechea, SGI CEO Date: Monday, May 10 Time: 1:00 p.m. PDT
  • Technology Keynote: SGI Technology Trends Presented by: Dr. Eng Lim Goh, SGI CTO Date: Monday, May 10 Time: 11:00 a.m. PDT
  • Session: SGI Product Overview Presented by: Rick Chapek, senior vice president of hardware engineering Date: Monday, May 10 Time: 2:00 p.m. PDT


About SGIUG

The SGI User Group is an independent, worldwide community focused on sharing information and improving the technical productivity of SGI high performance computing and data storage systems.

The user group is open to all, and welcomes new members, suggestions for activities and volunteers to organize the user group. It spotlights both the Linux® and IRIX ® operating systems, creating a technical community for all SGI customers.

The SGI User Group is an ideal way to access tutorials and future plans from SGI, and to have discussions with other users that will help get more from investment in SGI. The user group has a close relationship with SGI to ensure success.

The overall mission of SGIUG is to serve as an open forum to foster exchange of ideas and methodologies among computer scientists, researchers and engineers. For more information, please visit www.sgiug.org .


About SGI

SGI is a global leader in large-scale clustered computing, high performance storage, HPC and data center enablement and services. SGI is focused on helping customers solve their most demanding business and technology challenges. Visit www.sgi.com for more information.

© 2010 SGI. SGI, Altix and ICE Cube are registered trademarks or trademarks of Silicon Graphics International Corp. or its subsidiaries in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective holders.

<source: SGI via Business Wire >



So, IRIX isn't entirely dead yet? I mean, there's obviously stil an interest for it and at least they're still talking about it. (I won't get my hopes up, but it's still better than nothing).

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eMGee wrote:
So, IRIX isn't entirely dead yet? I mean, there's obviously stil an interest for it and at least they're still talking about it. (I won't get my hopes up, but it's still better than nothing).

As mentioned in the quoted text, the SGI User Group independent from SGI (the company).

It is unlikely that SGI (the company) is going to make new MIPS/IRIX products. IRIX and some systems will be support until 2013 I believe.

There are plenty of SGI users out there still using IRIX, so it makes sense that the SGI UG talks about IRIX and Linux. Maybe even after 2013. Under the umbrella of the SGI UG, or right here on Nekochan :)

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Now this is a deep dark secret, so everybody keep it quiet :)
It turns out that when reset, the WD33C93 defaults to a SCSI ID of 0, and it was simpler to leave it that way... -- Dave Olson, in comp.sys.sgi

Currently in commercial service: Image :Octane2: :Onyx2: (2x) :0300:
In the museum: almost every MIPS/IRIX system.
Did anyone attend this year or in the past?

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This was close by, wish I'd spotted it sooner. Then again, I hadn't been "reinfected" at that point so I probably wouldn't have bothered going. Oh well.

Didn't find coverage of the conference in a cursory search, but I did find this article covering a visit by CTO Dr. Eng Lim Goh with the Greater London LUG a couple weeks later in London. It doesn't seem like a bad piece in terms of what "SGI" appears to be up to these days. Perhaps it's not unfair to say this -- that SGI's brilliance was in making complex and difficult things much easier to accomplish. For most of their history that was graphics, animation, visualization and video/film. Nowadays they may still be making the complex manageable, just with respect to single-system-image clustered computing.

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Now? :Octane2: :Octane: :Indigo2IMP:
Then? :IRIS3130:
Other: DEC :BA213: :BA123: pdp/VAX/AXP, DG AViiON, other Moto 88k, NeXT :Cube: Nat Semi 32k, Sun 68k/SPARC
smj wrote:
Didn't find coverage of the conference in a cursory search, but I did find this article covering a visit by CTO Dr. Eng Lim Goh with the Greater London LUG a couple weeks later in London. It doesn't seem like a bad piece in terms of what "SGI" appears to be up to these days. Perhaps it's not unfair to say this -- that SGI's brilliance was in making complex and difficult things much easier to accomplish. For most of their history that was graphics, animation, visualization and video/film. Nowadays they may still be making the complex manageable, just with respect to single-system-image clustered computing.

Nice to hear someone say something mildly positive about today's SGI, even if I might quibble with one or two things the article's author wrote. :D

I'm now taking bets on how long it will take for someone to piss all over the current strategy. Oops - never mind. I read the comment thread on the Inquirer article. Looks like people already have that covered. Still, it was nice to read some favorable coverage for a change.
josehill wrote:
Still, it was nice to read some favorable coverage for a change.

If Rackable didn't come out with products like the Octane III and the Origin 400, you might hear fewer negative comments :(

Most SGI lovers really wanted them to do well but they seem pretty talented at butchering (what remained of) the SGI mystique.
hamei wrote:
josehill wrote:
Still, it was nice to read some favorable coverage for a change.

If Rackable didn't come out with products like the Octane III and the Origin 400, you might hear fewer negative comments :(

Most SGI lovers really wanted them to do well but they seem pretty talented at butchering (what remained of) the SGI mystique.




I'd give it a while. Rackable might actually , or perhaps surprise us by producing workstations for us power hungry users. Nekochan
does draw a fair amount of attention. So maybe they'll keep us in mind when producing new RISC hardware lol.


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MAYA, nut-
:Octane2: :Octane2: Octane 2 R14k 600 V12 4GB, Octane2 R14K 600 V10 1GB ,
:Onyx2: :Onyx2: Onyx2 IR3 4GB Quad R14K 500 DIVO, Onyx2 IR Quad R12K 400 2GB,
:Indigo2: SGI Indigo 2 R8K75 TEAL Extreme 256MB,
:Indigo2IMP: SGI Indigo 2 R10K 195 Solid Impact 256MB, MAX Impact Pending
,
Apple G5 Quad, NV Quadro 4500 + 7800GT, 12GB RAM
Sun Blade 1000 Dual 900 XVR 1000
Ryan Fox wrote:
I'd give it a while. Rackable might actually , or perhaps surprise us by producing workstations for us power hungry users. Nekochan
does draw a fair amount of attention. So maybe they'll keep us in mind when producing new RISC hardware lol.

[/color]


Unless something very unusual happens they won't. They could spend millions developing the R22k and millions developing V16 graphics or InfiniteReality5, and for the most part Intel, AMD and nVidia would match them speed-wise in 2 years. Another big SGI strength (probably the major remaining one) is NUMA, which is now commodity on the scale that would be used for the desktop. Their best graphics bet would be to come up with some sort of scaling out to many commodity GPUs that really works well and is transparent to the user and apps programmer (IOW do UltimateVision properly), and then bundle it with UltraViolet, Altix IA64, and possibly a really well made desktop multisocket NUMAbox (dual or quad socket). The only way they'd be able to get back in the proprietary business would be if the government sent them a big check, and that's highly unlikely - they'd send it to Oracle or IBM (and with the cancellation of Rock Oracle doesn't really have much in the way of selling points). As Skywriter has pointed out you need to move up the chain to survive now - come up with something to harness masses of commodity silicon easily, either with glue logic or software. That was the other big positive of the classic SGI - they made top-drawer graphics, yes, but they also made the software resources to easily use them (IRIS GL/OpenGL/OpenInventor/etc.)

Sadly IRIX is also unlikely to come back. You'd be a fool to get involved with the flaming remains of USL. Sure, SCO is write-off material now, but there will be someone else with a brilliant way to squeeze money out of dead IP who will pick up the pieces, and you don't have to loose lawsuits to have your company killed off by lawsuits.

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Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

:Indigo: :Octane: :Indigo2: :Indigo2IMP: :Indy: :PI: :O200: :ChallengeL:
Ryan Fox, that'd be amazing and almost a ‘dream’ come true. I won't be counting on it, but like you say, who knows. (I know this site draws attention, because a lot of people I speak to — interested in UNIX and UNIX-like/derived systems — have often heard of this place.)

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I think the 'new SGI' is doing very well. Beeing bought by Rackable was the best thing, that could happen to sgi - Rackable took all the risk, even during wwide economic crisis.

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:Octane2: 2xR12000 400MHz, 4GB RAM, V12 GFX
SGI - the legend will never die!!
You're right, it could've been far worse.

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eMGee wrote:
Ryan Fox, that'd be amazing and almost a ‘dream’ come true. I won't be counting on it, but like you say, who knows. (I know this site draws attention, because a lot of people I speak to — interested in UNIX and UNIX-like/derived systems — have often heard of this place.)

-shrugs- Hey its a dream. BUT even if it is an Intel based desktop machine with NUMA, or some high end version of application of PCI express, utilizing multiple processor boards, multiple off the shelf NVIDIA GPUs and gawd forbid the next generation of 3D LED LCDs running some form of linux all on one box... phew. EVEN if it costs twice the price of the latest fully loaded Mac Pro.. I'd still buy it just because its a Sgi.
The desktop market is a viable option if you desire to generate some serious wide-spread interest. Its expensive, but a great deal cheaper than buying a rack-based system. Its an affordable, powerful solution with a small footprint. -shrugs- Just a thought ^^

BTW Nekochan has even got folks here in South Africa interested. There are quite a few local film studios still actively using SGI gear!


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MAYA, nut-
:Octane2: :Octane2: Octane 2 R14k 600 V12 4GB, Octane2 R14K 600 V10 1GB ,
:Onyx2: :Onyx2: Onyx2 IR3 4GB Quad R14K 500 DIVO, Onyx2 IR Quad R12K 400 2GB,
:Indigo2: SGI Indigo 2 R8K75 TEAL Extreme 256MB,
:Indigo2IMP: SGI Indigo 2 R10K 195 Solid Impact 256MB, MAX Impact Pending
,
Apple G5 Quad, NV Quadro 4500 + 7800GT, 12GB RAM
Sun Blade 1000 Dual 900 XVR 1000